Of course I haven't taken advantage of everything that Chicago has to offer in the summer time. I haven't the time, nor the money. However, I will say that if I was independently wealthy and needed no job, I could easily fill my time with concerts, movies, outdoor restaurants, festivals, tours, and the like. Now that it is the end of June, I thought it might be useful for me, and mildly entertaining, to jot down the things I have enjoyed most about this summer:
1. Taking a nap in Millenium Park: the sun was on my face, the grass was cool, and I was completely unconscious.
2. Drinking a beer outside: it's relaxing.
3. Playing the piano with the windows open.
4. Slogging through the mud at The Blues Festival to see B.B. King perform.
5. Eating a picnic at Ravinia: jazz, dessert wine, and good company.
6. Building sand castles with Bryce and Angelica at the beach.
7. Dashing into the lake with friends at 10 o'clock at night while wearing American flag swim trunks as a few friends shot fireworks over our heads.
8. Wearing sun dresses whenever I want.
9. Dancing to soul music at a Wicker Park bar.
10. Smelling summer when I wake up in the morning.
There are still quite a few things on my summer list, most of which I hope to fulfill, although it seems to be rushing past me at a far greater clip than I anticipated.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Friday, June 20, 2008
delinquent
All the promises of more posts have come to naught. I have written so little lately that I have positively refused to log onto my own blog. The morose reality of the shoddiness of my most recent entry, along with its month-old stale status as the post that is displayed first, made the blog rather unpleasant to me. Exhaustion may be labeled as the culprit for the miserable, even non-existent, flow of creativity from my generally active brain. Because the busyness of my life isn't showing convincing signs of letting up any time soon, I've even thought about closing this down for a while. Not that this would particularly bother anyone, other than myself: I have a sneaking hunch that one or two people log onto this site a couple of times a day and make it look like it gets more hits than it really does. I've decided against the lame-ass option of quitting, however, and opted for more manageable, briefer posts. Several times I've begun lengthy entries, only to complete a page and a half and be down for the count--or, rather, initially up, as I must first climb up into my loft bed before collapsing. Short and sloppy will likely be the order of the blog for the next few months. Better than nothing, right?
As you may have surmised, I like finding pleasure, even spiritual significance, in the small things in life--the more common, the more everyday, the better. I like to look for understated moments and events that somehow reflect larger truths, realities, or characteristics of human nature. This is everything from watching a young guy hail a cab downtown for an old woman with a cane, to discussing racism with a black ex-con on the Red Line. When I was witnessing or partaking of these situations, I removed myself, if only briefly, for a few seconds to view it from the broader scope of humanity, even spirituality. Sometimes this causes a sentimentality that is most unbecoming, even cliche, especially for a blog, but I gotta bring it to ya'll real, know what I'm sayin'? Now, I don't usually experience these kinds of moments in structured institutions--give me the train or the street any day. But today, while spending my usual time with Bryce and Angelica, I experienced one of these moments in a museum, of all places.
Within the genetics exhibit of The Museum of Science and Industry (last surviving building of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair) there are two incubators. One for fluffy yellow chicks, the other for unhatched eggs and soggy, exhausted hatchlings. Apparently it takes about 5 hours for a chick to peck its way out of its shell, after which time they generally lay around for a couple more, resting and marvelling at the new things around them. Bryce, Jelly, and I somehow managed to visit the incubators at the 4 hour, 40 minute mark for one of the eggs. At first, we could see chips of the shell slowly flaking away every few minutes. The bird would peck for 2 or 3 seconds, then rest, peck, and rest. As a steady ring of shell was gradually pecked away, the chick moved more and more. At 4 hours and 50 minutes, it was time to go. It's an hour back from the museum, we had to go...Bryce and Jelly needed dinner; I needed the same, and a nap. But their little faces were plastered against the glass. Bryce had his hands over his ears so that he wouldn't be distracted by the large crowd of people gathering behind us. We had front row seats to the show, not everyone did. They weren't speaking, just watching. When Bryce forgot to keep his hands over his ears, he would turn around, and each time I would say, "Bryce, don't take your eyes off of him. You could miss it." But it was time to go. How was I to know that we were at 4 hours and 50 minutes? It could be another hour, for all I knew. But I sensed that this was some kind of a spiritual moment, as strange as that sounds. I eat chickens. The damn things hatch all the time. Lots of them. And yet we were all watching with bated breath. And when the top of the shell began to show signs of opening to reveal the chick, not just a beak or some feathers poking through egg lining, there were little gasps of wonder from the people around us. We three stayed mostly silent. When the chick broke out fully, we watched for a few minutes more while it lay on its back, panting and sweaty. But one of the hatched chicks in the corner had gotten hurt somehow and was bleeding. Angelica asked about it and I tried to explain, although I wasn't really sure how it had happened myself. She said she didn't want to look at it, so I put my hand over the glass through which she could see the bleeding, half-dead chick; she turned away to watch the newest one of the bunch.
They were quiet for a minute or two after we walked away, which is saying something for children whose energy is infinite and penchant for chattering just as bad. Angelica informed that she had never seen anything like it before. I said the same, although I meant it in a different way. I suppose it does seem a bit strange to feature the birth of a farm animal in the midst of a place with more technology, metal, and plastic than you could possibly see in a day; perhaps stranger still is the fact that none of us could keep our eyes off of this perfectly natural, organic process, or even politely mask our wonder.
As you may have surmised, I like finding pleasure, even spiritual significance, in the small things in life--the more common, the more everyday, the better. I like to look for understated moments and events that somehow reflect larger truths, realities, or characteristics of human nature. This is everything from watching a young guy hail a cab downtown for an old woman with a cane, to discussing racism with a black ex-con on the Red Line. When I was witnessing or partaking of these situations, I removed myself, if only briefly, for a few seconds to view it from the broader scope of humanity, even spirituality. Sometimes this causes a sentimentality that is most unbecoming, even cliche, especially for a blog, but I gotta bring it to ya'll real, know what I'm sayin'? Now, I don't usually experience these kinds of moments in structured institutions--give me the train or the street any day. But today, while spending my usual time with Bryce and Angelica, I experienced one of these moments in a museum, of all places.
Within the genetics exhibit of The Museum of Science and Industry (last surviving building of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair) there are two incubators. One for fluffy yellow chicks, the other for unhatched eggs and soggy, exhausted hatchlings. Apparently it takes about 5 hours for a chick to peck its way out of its shell, after which time they generally lay around for a couple more, resting and marvelling at the new things around them. Bryce, Jelly, and I somehow managed to visit the incubators at the 4 hour, 40 minute mark for one of the eggs. At first, we could see chips of the shell slowly flaking away every few minutes. The bird would peck for 2 or 3 seconds, then rest, peck, and rest. As a steady ring of shell was gradually pecked away, the chick moved more and more. At 4 hours and 50 minutes, it was time to go. It's an hour back from the museum, we had to go...Bryce and Jelly needed dinner; I needed the same, and a nap. But their little faces were plastered against the glass. Bryce had his hands over his ears so that he wouldn't be distracted by the large crowd of people gathering behind us. We had front row seats to the show, not everyone did. They weren't speaking, just watching. When Bryce forgot to keep his hands over his ears, he would turn around, and each time I would say, "Bryce, don't take your eyes off of him. You could miss it." But it was time to go. How was I to know that we were at 4 hours and 50 minutes? It could be another hour, for all I knew. But I sensed that this was some kind of a spiritual moment, as strange as that sounds. I eat chickens. The damn things hatch all the time. Lots of them. And yet we were all watching with bated breath. And when the top of the shell began to show signs of opening to reveal the chick, not just a beak or some feathers poking through egg lining, there were little gasps of wonder from the people around us. We three stayed mostly silent. When the chick broke out fully, we watched for a few minutes more while it lay on its back, panting and sweaty. But one of the hatched chicks in the corner had gotten hurt somehow and was bleeding. Angelica asked about it and I tried to explain, although I wasn't really sure how it had happened myself. She said she didn't want to look at it, so I put my hand over the glass through which she could see the bleeding, half-dead chick; she turned away to watch the newest one of the bunch.
They were quiet for a minute or two after we walked away, which is saying something for children whose energy is infinite and penchant for chattering just as bad. Angelica informed that she had never seen anything like it before. I said the same, although I meant it in a different way. I suppose it does seem a bit strange to feature the birth of a farm animal in the midst of a place with more technology, metal, and plastic than you could possibly see in a day; perhaps stranger still is the fact that none of us could keep our eyes off of this perfectly natural, organic process, or even politely mask our wonder.
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